The grandson of the founder of Kaiser Permanente was sentenced Tuesday to a year and a day in jail for his role in a scheme to misappropriate $25 million from a telecommunications company. Henry Mead Kaiser, the grandson of Henry J. Kaiser, the industrialist who formed the nation's largest health maintenance organization, faced three years or more in jail, but a judge ordered a reduced sentence after Kaiser took steps even prosecutors called extraordinary to begin atoning for his crimes. Kaiser and a father-son team, Larry Wells and Jeffrey Wells, repeatedly transferred $25 million back and forth between SureWest Communications and a venture capital company, Quivira Ventures, owned by the elder Wells and Kaiser. The purpose of the transfers was to allow Quivira to demonstrate to potential investors that it had sufficient funds in deposit to qualify for various funding proposals. Kaiser spent the past two years cooperating with police to prosecute his co-defendants. ... http://abcnews.go.com

Lebanon faces a ``security vacuum'' unless 30,000 United Nations peacekeepers and Lebanese soldiers are deployed to oversee a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, a United Nations envoy said. There is ``reason for pessimism'' until the forces are in the area, said Terje Roed-Larsen, who ended visits to Lebanon and Israel yesterday. A ``capable and fully deployed Lebanese force'' is needed along the borders and in southern Lebanon as well as an expanded international contingent, he said, according to the UN. The UN is struggling to persuade countries to contribute military personnel to a 3,500-member unit it wants deployed within two weeks. The force will eventually number 15,000 and Lebanon will send 15,000 soldiers to the region. The cease-fire that came into force Aug. 14 halted a 33-day war between Israel and the Hezbollah group. European Union foreign ministers will meet Aug. 25 to discuss Europe's contribution to the UN force that will help the ...http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a_aIkCrm47xw&refer=worldwide_news

Debby, a tropical depression in the far eastern Atlantic, strengthened into the fourth tropical storm of the 2006 hurricane season, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said on Tuesday night. In its latest advisory, the Miami-based hurricane center said Debby had maximum sustained winds near 40 mph (65 kph) and was about 300 miles west of the southernmost Cape Verde islands. It was moving toward the west-northwest near 18 mph (30 kph) and some more strengthening was forecast during the next 24 hours. A tropical depression becomes a tropical storm when sustained winds reach 39 mph (63 kph). The hurricane center said earlier that top winds could hit 74 mph (119 kph), the threshold for hurricane status, in four days. ...http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2345229

The Miami-Dade County School District voted Tuesday to press ahead with its effort to remove a children's book on life in Cuba from its school libraries. The board voted 5-2 to appeal a federal judge's temporary order barring the district from removing the children's book, along with 23 others in the series. The district wants to remove "Vamos a Cuba" ("A Visit to Cuba") following a parent's complaint that it failed to accurately depict the reality of life under Cuba's communist government. The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida sued to keep the books on the shelf, arguing that they were generally factual, and that the board should add books to its collection, rather than removing those it disagreed with. ...http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2345199

Roger Di Rosa, standing atop a high ridge overlooking a broad basin and the Growler Mountains beyond, recalls what this protected area was like nearly 30 years ago when he did his first tour here in the Southwest's Sonoran Desert."You could go out and not see another person for a week," says Di Rosa, who now manages the sprawling U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuge that covers an area the size of Rhode Island. There's no longer a shortage of people here or on other federal land that makes up 43% of the 1,900-mile boundary with Mexico. Aggressive crackdowns along the border in recent years in places such as San Diego and El Paso have pushed illegal immigrants and drug smugglers into remote desert areas in southern Arizona.As a result, employees from park rangers to biologists are dealing more with the effects of illegal immigration, instead of protecting wildlife and helping visitors....http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-22-parks-borders_x.htm?csp=34

A man known as "Superpapa" who says he took advantage of a quirk in German laws to adopt more than 300 children worldwide has been arrested on suspicion of violating laws on child rearing in Paraguay, authorities said Tuesday. Jurgen Ernst Hass, a German citizen whose claims were widely published in the European media, was picked up Monday at a hotel in the city of Caaguazu and taken to a jail in the capital of Asuncion, about 140 miles east, according to a police statement.Police said Hass, 56, was turned over to the courts for investigation of reported attempts to adopt dozens of Paraguayan children and would be called for initial questioning in coming days.Hass, dubbed "Superpapa" by the local press, drew attention with public boasts of numerous adoptions around the world....http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,209835,00.html